After spending a week in New York City and talking to agents, editors, authors, etc. I sensed a growing shift in the way eBooks are viewed by traditional publishers.
Right now we have the Agency model where publishers get to set the prices for their eBooks and they’ve set them quite unrealistically to try to hold on to their print sales. First, one could easily argue that a high eBook price isn’t exactly going to drive a Kindle or Nook user to go buy the print version. It’s actually driving them to buy a less expensive Ebook. Which is good news for indie authors. For example, in Men’s Adventure on Kindle, Steve Berry is #1, I’m #2 and #3, then there are two Clive Cussler titles, then I’m #6. So 50% of the top six books in that genre are mine. In War, I have 11 of the top 50, more than W.E.B. Griffin, one of the masters of that genre. I have two of the top ten science fiction sellers on both US and UK Kindle (Area 51 and Atlantis). I submit it’s not necessarily that my books are so great (although they are), but also an issue of pricing. At $2.99, I think my books look a lot more attractive than a $14.99 book from some trad author.
I’ve previously pointed out how pricing an eBook over $10 makes no sense financially. Frankly, I’m of the opinion that pricing an eBook over $5 isn’t that great and at Who Dares Wins Publishing we recently reduced prices on all our titles to under $5, including our nonfiction.
On the other end of the spectrum is the uproar over the .99 eBook. John Locke has made a lot of headlines for his savvy move of selling over one million eBooks, except all are priced at .99 except for his book about selling one million eBooks which is $4.99. I kind of love the logic there. But I’ve also pointed out that one million eBooks at .99 equals 166,000 eBooks at $2.99, which several indies, myself included, have achieved with much less fanfare.
The big cloud I’m seeing on the horizon is the growing awareness in NY that they need to revise the way they view the eBook. It’s not competition for their print sales, it’s part of their overall revenue stream. I predict we will see a lot more books from the Big 6 priced under $5 in the coming months. I think there will be more direct to eBook publishing, where the book might never even come out in print.
What does this mean? The playing field is going to level out. New York is going to get leaner and more efficient and embrace the eBook instead of viewing it as the enemy. Indie authors are going to have to work harder to keep their readers and also consider, if successful, what to do when NY or Amazon or whoever comes calling with offers.
The biggest thing all writers—trad, indie, hybrid—need to realize is that there is no one ‘right’ path to Oz. In fact, we’re all starting from different places, not necessarily all from Kansas, and Oz might even mean different things to each of us. To each their own, but the ones who succeed will be the ones who keep their options open and constantly educate themselves on the business and also are able to act decisively.
What you don’t want to be, as I teach in Write It Forward, is Buridan’s Ass, named after the 14th Century French philosopher, Jean Burdan:
A donkey is placed midway between a stack of hay and a tub of water. Since it’s both hungry and thirsty, it want’s both. But it can’t decide which it wants more. Since it can’t make a decision, it stays there, frozen, uncertain, until eventually it dies of either hunger or thirst.
As I’ve been saying for a long time, echoing back to my days in the Infantry: Lead, Follow, or Get The Hell Out Of The Way!
Write it Forward!
This is a timely post for me. Just today I discovered that a particular NY agent is looking for exactly what my book is, in terms of genre. But my release date is already set for 25th August. I’ve already set up promotion, interviews, reviews. Do I just put all that on hold while I wait for an agent to ask for chapters? After a couple of hours of wretchedness (followed by another half hour of (probably) driving my CP up the wall) I decided to query, but to go ahead and publish as planned. It may be a daft idea even to query, I can’t quite figure out whether it’s a good idea or not. But I’ve been so determined to publish independently and it doesn’t seem like a good idea to suddenly swing for the trads again when I’m so close to publishing as an indie. I don’t want to be that donkey!
Thanks for sharing your dilemma, Anne. As a newbie, I am also feeling the various pulls towards and against trad publishing. Let us know how your process turns out…very curious.
As always, excellent insight, wisdom shared and food for thought! Thanks, Bob
What percentage of the under $5 eBook will the author get? Doesn’t sound like a good deal for writers who go with the trad publishers.
Edie– good point. There are so many angles to this, some form of critical mass will explode. JK Rowling going kind of on her own was a big warning sign to many– and has been ignored by many.
As usual, an interesting and thought provoking post.
The thought that the whales (Traditional NY Publishers) are moving into the neighborhood, should be a wake -up for many of we Indie writers. It’s time to groom your readers. Answer every post, every comment and seek more. Build up your reader base for the coming storm.
However I agree with the previous comment that asked if the big NY boys could possibly match the relatively high royalty rates enjoyed by the Indies. I suspect they’re likely to be behind the curve on that also. A level playing field indeed.
Great post, Bob. You can say things that make sense and make one think. I don’t see a problem with the Big 6 reducing prices– they should. It will level the field and perhaps run off some who won’ take the time to make a book readable. Readers do follow Brands but if the price is right they will shop around as well. And if they find something they like they tell their friends!
Thank you for this post and staying on top of issues that affect us all.
Bob – love you as an author and teacher but, dude, the math….????
1,000,000 at $0.99=$990,000 / $2,99 per ebook = ~331,100 copies
Am I missing something?
Yes, you are missing something. Because a .99 book gets a 35% royalty while a $2.99 gets 70% royalty. So the math is correct.
Ah, thanks for clarifying that!
Great points, Bob. Perhaps the traditionals need to sign up for your Write It Forward classes. They may find it useful.
I find your posts most interesting, particularly since I haven’t yet pitched my book anywhere and haven’t decided which publishing avenue to pursue. The pros and cons you recite about self-publishing and eBooks certainly make me think, however. Still, at this point, I feel less decisive than Buridan’s Ass.
Great post, Bob! I’ve waited since the dawning of indie publishing for the Big 6 to realize that epublishing is NOT the enemy, it is FUTURE! I look forward to the time when they publish their authors’ ebooks at a fair price – something below $5.00. Although it will massively increase the competition for those of us who are indie-pubbed right now, it “may” also increase the possibility for currently unpublished authors to find a home. After all, what monetary risk is there to publishing a new author in “E” only?
Thanks for your insight! I always look forward to your blogs!
Amazing. I was just discussing the price points with a friend yesterday. I have an ebook priced at $6.50 and the publisher refuses to reduce the price, therefore hurting sales which costs the both of us. I just published a book myself for $2.99 and my sales have been excellent. I cannot understand the reason for cutting off your nose to spite your face.
It will be interesting to see if NY jumps on the price bandwagon. Readers are growing more and more accustomed to low prices for ebooks.
Definitely luuuvvv the Buridan’s Ass analogy, Bob!
I go with this one too by Will Rogers:
“Even though you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.”
So yeah…you don’t want to get run over…or, in the ass analogy, die…’course if you got run over while on a track, you’d probably die too! Just sayin’…LOL!
And I constantly use the Publishing Oz schtick as well to describe our writing-for-publication journeys (and The Flying Monkeys too…but that’s another Muse Therapy story of its own)…in that, we’ve each got to find our own way to our own Publishing Oz.
It’s just sooo comforting to know that we’ve now got a good ‘ole Toto – in the Indie Epub Route – that’s yanked back The Big Six’s Wizard curtain!!!
Love the post, Bob
. It’s much more encouraging to think of the goal of selling 166k books versus a million, especially for those of us just getting started. That is one heck of a nice living, and much more achievable, as you and other best sellers have shown.
Oh, it’s coming.
You know what the next permutation might be? I have a theory.
Straight sales. Publishers realize the money in digital is in volume, and in time/sweet time. The shelf life exceeds that of a twinkie (and we know those things will outlive roaches after the nuclear apocolypse). So how do you maximize profit, and minimize hassle?
But the rights. Just like you might for cover art.
And another potential: the art house staff writer. As you probably well know Bob, Men’s Adventure is no stranger to this concept: the cadre of authors producing under a single name for a solid series. (Able Team/Phoenix Force : Steiger/Willson, or, Nick Carter’s Kill Master series).
Well, scrub it up for the new age, and you might see purchased stories slotted for fee for service work to writers who can crank and clean, or even to a junior editor who does a polish up, and “bob’s your uncle”. Out it goes. No need to split the take.
today, for fun I took a break and did some rough math. to recoup an investment on 20 stories purchased at about 1k each (I’m thinking barley novel word cound), estimated low production costs since most will be in house, it takes very few sales over a calendar year, per title, to earn back that investment. After year 1 the rest is gravey. Even at a 2 – 5 spread, it’s still very possible to break even in about a year, with a little more exposure and sales.
If I were in corporate publishing, I’d be thinking this.
I’m certain many authors would say WTF followed by a resounding Hell No, but to someone relatively prolific who wants a pay day without having to wait and sweat competing for marketing space and buyer dollar and reader memory…why not?
Gold Eagle publishing had many authors under one name, Harlequin used to own author’s pen names, product is what earns over time, and writers want to sell and hate to promote. Can’t you see it? Make the pay out sweet enough, people will bite.
Excellent post and even better reference quote. Do you really feel that the trad-pubs will react as quickly as a few months before they start shifting prices?
Yup! They need to embrace change…especially since Borders is going to close down (1 less hardcopy distributor). At the very least, they need to adapt.
Ebooks are good for us writers. It gave us another path we could explore. We could basically publish our books for free–it’s a matter of distribution. Indeed, there’s no right or wrong way to reach the destination. What matters is we get there.
The donkey could have both. I’ll drink half the water first then go back and grab the hay. Then, I’ll go and finish the rest of the water.
It’s just the length of time we wanted. 
As always, a bracing post, Bob. Better than coffee.
Jon Olson
The Petoskey Stone
I recently discovered an author I loved because a friend gave me her book. Since it was a fantasy series, I went online to buy the rest of the books on my Kindle. I cringed at paying $7.99 for the next ebook, but I really wanted to finish the story (it’s a trilogy, so it didn’t finish) and that’s close to what I’d pay for a paperback. Then I looked at the books earlier in the series. The next one I wanted to buy was $11.99! No way. At the Borders 40% off sale today, I bought the paperback at the store. A third of the price. It’s not that I don’t have the money to spend on a $11.99 ebook, I do. But I felt I was being taken advantage of. This wonderful author is suffering the loss of sales because her publisher is pricing her books too high.
12 weeks ago, I self-published my two “sweet” historical western romances, one at .99 and one at 2.99. I felt that readers would be more willing to try an unknown author at .99. As of today, I’ve sold over 8500 books. At first the sales of the cheaper book was about 5 or 6 to 1 of the more expensive one. Now it’s 3 to 1 and edging closer to 2 to 1. The sales of the cheaper book put me on some Amazon top 100 lists, which drove the sales even more. The low price has worked for me.
However, if I were a published author with a following, I would have started at 2.99 with the first book, and 3.99 for the second. If I were a big name author, I’d probably do 4.99 for both.
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Great post as always. We are so in agreement with the $5 price point. I know some think that you can command that price because you were traditionally published in the past but I have many authors that have only been only indie and yet still sell thousands and tens of thousands of books at the $4.95. Some examples from July: Leslie Ann Moore 5,500 books, Nathan Lowell 9,500, Marshall thomas 19,500. My husband’s books are now off the market as he is moving to traditional but when he was selling he also sold 10,000+ books in Nov – Feb. So it can be done. I think more people have to get of fthe $0.99 price point because it is so hard to make a “true living” at that price.
I readily look forward to the day (hopefully soon!) that traditional publishing houses start looking at eBooks as the future, and price accordingly. I do think a lot of the old publishing models are out of date, but once the publishing world starts tackling these changes… I don’t think they’re going to be as obsolete as everyone is claiming they are.
Love this: “But I’ve also pointed out that one million eBooks at .99 equals 166,000 eBooks at $2.99, which several indies, myself included, have achieved with much less fanfare.” — Exactly!